The Reality Principle

Disneyland is presented in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality, but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle...

Watergate. Same scenario as Disneyland (an imaginary effect concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the bounds of the artificial parameter): though here it is a scandal-effect concealing that there is no difference between the facts and their denunciation. Same operation, though this time tending towards scandal as a means to regenerate a moral and political principle, towards the imaginary as a means to regenerate a reality principle in distress.

The denunciation of scandal always pays homage to the law. And Watergate above all succeeded in imposing the idea that Watergate was a scandal – in this sense it was an extraordinary operation of intoxication: the reinjection of a large dose of political morality on a global scale.

- Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings
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Unrelated, but still:

Space may be the final frontier
But it’s made in a Hollywood basement

- Californication, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Parasite

Conversation veers to love, marriage and relationships. You sense conflict, hurt and discontentment. You ask for the specific, I laugh and say it is boring and would take a long while. “Try me,” you urge.

My feet are white against the maroon velvet of the seat in front. Tired from a long day, missing friends and family, everything different, unfamiliar – people I long for, human touch. I shiver in the dark. Our shoulders barely touch but the heat between them comforts me.

We are awkward with each other at breakfast the next morning. A good night’s sleep and talking to loved ones – rested emotionally and physically, I don’t need you any more.

And it is daylight and the awkwardness of seeing each other again that alerts us to the connection we felt the night before, though we didn’t realize it then.

Damn Good!

A few days ago, I was lying on my Mom’s bad watching my niece play on the computer when she suddenly said ‘damn’, not just once, but quite a few times.

I debated as to whether I should react, and then decided that if you’ve reached Level 9 of Redbeard after 50 games, and then miss the blue bar and drown, a mild expletive, even if repeated, is permissible.

But today she said it at dinner and my mother expressed shock etc. But my niece gave her a very logical answer as to why it was alright to say ‘damn’. None of the usual ‘But mummy says it’ or ‘If grown-ups can then why can’t I.’

This was her explanation:

It’s okay to say ‘damn’ because they are too kinds of damn – good and bad, and I meant the good one.

What do you mean two kinds?

Yeah there are two kinds – damn good and damn bad!
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Client meeting today. Went well, not too many changes. Final edit and delivery tomorrow.

Didn’t make the appointment. Yeah, yeah, I know. First thing tomorrow. Promise.

Venus and Mars / Wisdom

Venus and Mars

A woman senses I’ve been low. She says to me, “You look much better than yesterday, brighter.”

“Yes, I feel better.”

She looks down at me like Nurse Ratchett, and says, “That’s good.”

I smile pathetically and feel like a certified loony who has been given shock therapy and is now in a halfway house, been allowed to go out for coffee as a concession for good behaviour.



A guy senses I’ve been low, well I pretty much spell it out...

He calls me from across the country so I can hear the torrent of rain outside his window.

I am reminded that life is good. :)

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Wisdom

Since you are the wisest person at the table, tell me, is one more accepting of life as one gets older? Do the existential questions fade away? Does the confusion simmer down?

She gave me a little smile. “Let me tell you a story.”

Vincent was a family friend who lived in Goa. His father was a rich Portuguese trader and his mother was Konkani. He inherited land, a title and an elegant lifestyle. Never worked in his life, was an accomplished opera singer, owned a sailboat. Was always surrounded by the best of friends, had a wonderful wife and two lovely children.

When the Portuguese left India, he was seventy. Though offered Portuguese citizenship he chose to stay in India. He had lands and money. Life was good.

Except that the price of his brand of cigarettes increased, just by eight annas initially, but then steadily, year after year.

This mundane eventuality broke him.

At the age of seventy-five he could tell you the time of day from the number of empty bottles on the right side of his bed and the number of full ones on the left.
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Have been reading the writer chick’s manuscript. It is quite good, found me smiling to myself at a few passages, the kind I would read out to a friend or post here.

Just wish she wasn’t so exasperating.

Update

Have been trying to write something interesting and clever but I can’t so here’s a regular update.

The project is going well. I am learning a lot. The producer gives me a lot of responsibility. I felt inadequate and uneasy during the last project I did for her cos I didn’t think I was doing a very good job. But then of her own accord, she decided to pay me 25 percent more than what we had settled for. So I obviously did okay.

I have been feeling like I’ve been taken advantage of by a friend and his writer friend who has been staying with me. I’ve been too nice and giving and I am angry with myself for not being more assertive and drawing huge big lines like I should have. We are both also on permanent PMS mode and so have been rubbing each other the wrong way. She can be very patronizing which really gets my goat. On the other hand, she is very good with my cat and has long conversations with him in Marathi. I can’t be sure yet, but I think she may be brilliant. Guess we’ll just have to tolerate each other till the end of this week. My friend is really going to get it though once she leaves, he has behaved most badly.

I had an appointment with a therapist on Wednesday but I cancelled it. Will make another for this week and show up this time. One half of me is kicking and screaming and dragging her heels in the ground and the other half is dragging her by the collar, knowing it must be done. Will not make the mistake of keeping things inside again. Actually this time I don’t think I have the option of keeping it inside, if I do I will surely go nuts.

It is raining :)

I have been out every night this week. Suddenly everyone seems to want to hang out with me.

Ooh have to run – need to be at the studio by noon!

Random Rhymes

There was an old woman
Who built a world in her head
She wished she were alive
She wished she were dead.


A woman is good
A man is best
Find a man who's a woman
And you're truly blessed!


Look through the yellow pages
Call Psy Central
Try to find a counsellor
To stop you going mental!


Be nice, be true
Be sad, be blue


Run away from your friends
Hide behind the door
Put on your mask again
Don't let them hear you snore!


Many fish in the sea
Swimming here and there
I caught me one I liked
But it bit me in the rear!


That's all folk!

True Life

Since everyone is writing stories about childhoods and bullying, why not me.

This is a true story.

Ananth was born on a rainy day in September. It was a long and painful delivery.

His parents had longed for this child. They had spent hours talking about what it would be like to finally hold him in their arms, had bought tiny clothes and repainted their one-room flat.

But his mother was not allowed to experience the sweet reward of holding her child, watch him breathe, feel his soft skin and show off to visitors after he was born. The doctors and her family had to defer this event for a few days, to prepare her for the shock.

Ananth was born with a cleft palate. (contd. below)

cleft

He had his first operation when he was six months old and has had four more since then. When he was twelve, his nose had to be rebuilt taking bone shavings from his pelvis. He went back to hospital when he was in college, on his own initiative, to have his ears reshaped.

Ananth once told me that kids used to throw stones on him as he walked back from school. He wet his bed till a late age, was on anti-depressants at the tender age of five.

Once at a wedding, a doctor saw him and remarked loudly that he was mentally retarded and started describing the ‘condition’ to people around. Ananth was nine. He ran to his father crying. His father calmed him down and Ananth poured out the whole story. ‘He said I was retarded! I feel like… I feel like… smashing his car!’ His father was silent and then said ‘Go do it.’

That night Ananth let fly a huge rock into the windscreen of the doctor’s fancy car.

His father was superman. He made Ananth go up to strangers and strike conversations. He pushed him to take tabla lessons, football, art. Though short and not quite athletic, Ananth became the captain of his school’s football team. But this had its own pressures, and his art teacher who he was close to, sat him down one day and told him, ‘The problem is that your father wants you to be good at everything. You don’t have to be.’

Contrary to what one might have thought, Ananth was popular in middle and high school. He had a close-knit gang of friends who were responsible for all misdeeds in school – fire-crackers in the loo, frog’s heads in girls’ bags, deflating the principal’s tyres, climbing the school walls to attend rock shows.

In college he went through the whole drugs and rock n’ roll gamut. He got laid before any of his pals.

He got some friends together, they formed a band, each arbitrarily assigned a musical instrument which they had to then learn! The most good-looking of them was chosen to front the band, Ananth was supposed to play the bass. But due to some mix-up during one of their first shows, he found himself in front of the mike. His high energy stage act, inspired by his tortured grunge heroes Cobain and Vedder, soon got the band a cult following in the university.

He has progressed since then, has appeared on several TV talk shows, has been written about in magazines and newspapers, even asked to pose for Page 3.

I would have put links here, but I don’t think he would like that. People in the rock scene will probably know who he is.

The Shortest Nursery Rhyme Ever

Baa baa black sheep have you any wool?


No.

Proof that mediocrity rules. How can an author refer to books as impersonal??

Tag - you're it!

Okay, I’ve backtracked and figured out this tag thing – what a fun!! I don’t understand why people want to nuke each other for tagging them etc., this is good!

Okay so:

1. Films I own: boring question, pass

2. Five films that mean something to me:

Jungle Book
Waisa bhi hota hai Part II
Bend it like Beckham
My Cousin Vinny
Annie

3. Last film bought: boring question, pass – okay if you must know, ‘Pyaasa’.

4. Five ppl to tag: The latest additions to me blog pal list – they are:

Wabbster
Bips
Addict of Ambiguity
hope and love
Persephone

Have fun folk!

Back Home

It feels good to be home.

Right from when I stepped in the cab and the hot loo hit my face – I knew I was home, back to dusty, blazing hot Delhi!

The pilot didn’t seem too happy to land – ‘Visibility 2.5 kms, lots of dust. Outside temperature (here I swear his voice choked!) 41 degrees’.

After staying in Pune for a month, passing in and out of Bombay, and holidaying in Goa and Kerala earlier this year, I do realize that you have to have grown up in Delhi to like it.

It’s just the familiarity of the roads I suppose.

I was dreading coming home to an empty house. But surprisingly home felt great. Luxurious, after the spartan blue-walled hostel room.

Presents meant for someone else given away or put back in the bookshelf. Memory persists.

I watch my emotions change from understanding and relief to hurt and confusion to anger and now to indifference. Guess it’s the mind’s way of dealing with things it cannot understand.